


a hell of a team

by tftbfm



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:38:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5300615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tftbfm/pseuds/tftbfm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ruby and maccready's journey across the commonwealth<br/>slow burn</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. an extra gun

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a mess of an author, haven't written in years, excuse any mistakes
> 
> my fallout filth tumblr is ellie-perkins. all i do there is shamefully thirst over maccready

She had been meaning to ask herself how she had managed to end up in Goodneighbor of all places, but had been intentionally putting it off. She figured she didn't have time for it. After watching the mayor murder someone for ticking him off, she decided to wander over to the nearest bar. Although Ruby had been traveling throughout the Commonwealth for a while, death still bothered her. Every time she watched someone die that wasn't expecting it, she got a little more paranoid it was going to happen to her next. She had been suffering with paranoia for all of her life; the Commonwealth's viciousness and savagery only heightened it. After wandering a short time before seeing a sign for Goodneighbor's nearest bar and passing the fashionable Ham, she made her way to get a drink. The beer was fucking disgusting, but she drowned a few bottles anyways. Her eyes wandered over to Magnolia, appreciating her voice. If there was one good thing about this town she'd seen so far, it was her. Her voice calmed her nerves quite a bit. The fact that she was more calm than usual paired with her tipsiness made her more willing to do things she wouldn't usually do- such as go down the stairs at the other end of the room to meet this MacCready character she had heard about on her way into the bar. 

"Should we take this outside?" A teasing voice asked.  
"It ain't like that. I'm just here to deliver a message." The man was clearly irritated with MacCready, and so was his partner standing next to him.  
"In case you haven't heard, I left the Gunners for good." Ruby was curious, but felt like she was overstepping some boundaries being here. The old her would have gotten up and left. But right now it was like she was watching a TV show she couldn't look away from. She watched as the scrappy young man stood up, presumably to try and intimidate the two men he was talking to. She couldn't help but notice how young he looked.  
"But you're still taking jobs in the Commonwealth. That isn't going to work with us." Ruby was almost drunk enough to bash the two people harassing the poor dude. Almost. Perhaps if she wasn't in just a raggedy old baseball uniform and cap, but rather some Power Armor. She really missed being in it.  
"I don't take orders from you. Not anymore. So why don't you take your girlfriend and walk out of here while you still can." She smiled to herself as she saw him stand up for himself, admiring how he didn't take their shit. She told herself that she would join in if the situation escalated, for some reason siding with the man in the hat that she found pretty dorky. There was something likable about him.  
"What? Winlock, tell me we don't have to listen to this shit."  
"Listen up, MacCready. The only reason we haven't filled your body full of bullets is that we don't want a war with Goodneighbor. See, we respect other people's boundaries. We know how to play the game. It's something _you_ never learned."  
"Glad to have disappointed you." Ruby was drunk enough to want to hire him just to hear him make shitty jokes. She was sure it would keep her morale up. She heard Winlock chuckle, and it felt grating against her ears.  
"You can play the tough guy all you want. But if we hear you're still operating in Gunner territory, all bets are off. You got that?" Winlock asked.  
"You finished?" MacCready asked, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips.  
"Yeah. We're finished. Come on, Barnes." Winlock and his girlfriend began walking away from the mercenary. After they were gone, Ruby approached him. Before she could even get a word in about wanting protection, he spoke.

"Look, lady. If you're here preaching about the Atom, or looking for a friend, you've got the wrong guy. If you need a hired gun... Then maybe we can talk."  
Ruby's curiosity got the best of her, once again.  
"Maybe. Why don't you tell me who those guys were first?" She asked, phrasing it less like a question and more like a demand.  
"A couple of morons looking to climb the ladder of success by stepping on everyone else on the way up. You shouldn't be surprised, though. That's how it goes when you run with the Gunners."  
"Never heard of the Gunners. Who are they?" She asked, determined to find out. Right now, she wanted to kill all of them. It was all the alcohol, though.  
After finding out about the Gunners and their reputation among the Commonwealth, MacCready explained his past with them.  
"Now, what about you? How do I know I won't end up with a bullet in my back?" MacCready asked. Ruby figured he was almost as paranoid as she was. In fact, the only reason she was sort of trusting him was because she was drunk and saw he could hold his own against a few guys much bigger than them.  
"You don't. That's part of the risk, right?"  
MacCready looked impressed with how she handled herself. But maybe it was just Ruby projecting her wishes.  
"Can't argue with that. Tell you what. Price is 250 caps, up front. And there's no room for bargaining. What do you say?"  
She half wanted to test and see how true that statement was, and half wanted to save money.  
"Everything's negotiable. Would you take 200?"  
"You drive a hard bargain, but you just bought yourself an extra gun. Alright, Boss. Let's get out of here." 

Ruby led the two to the nearest hotel, the Hotel Rexford. After paying for their room, she threw all of her shit on the floor except her baseball cap, which she placed delicately on top of the dresser the two were to share for the night.  
"My first job is to sleep? Jeez, if working for you is gonna be this easy, then I'm happy."  
"Yeah, it's gonna get a fuck of a lot harder, though." She said, a pang of sadness moving through her as she thought of her boy and how hard it was going to be to find him. Hell, it was already the most work she'd ever put into anything. Passing the BAR was pancakes compared to this.  
"And why is that?" MacCready asked, still not having unpacked anything or unholstered anything. He hadn't even closed the door yet.  
"I'm finding my son. He was kidnapped. There's a lot of assholes out there between us and him we're going to have to take care of."  
MacCready was having some trouble determining what he thought of this woman. So far the only thing he knew was that her son was kidnapped, and she liked baseball. Or maybe she didn't, and was just wearing the uniform for the hell of it. He guessed he only knew one thing about her, then.  
"Sounds like fun." MacCready didn't know if he was being genuine or not, but it was something to say. He wasn't one to leave silences unfilled.  
"Yeah, if you count shooting a bunch of raiders to be fun."  
"I do count that as fun."  
"Great. We'll head out tomorrow, then." Ruby kicked her shoes off and laid down on the bed she had owned and let out a small huff of relief. It was so, _so_ much better than sleeping on dirt and rocks like she had the last few times she had slept.  
"Where am I gonna sleep?" MacCready asked.  
"The bed? The floor? Whatever you want." Ruby said, as if his options were clear as daylight.  
"But you're in the bed." MacCready said.  
"You're turning away the opportunity to sleep in the same bed with someone as cute as me?" Ruby teased, still pretty buzzed.  
"I... Okay." He didn't want to sleep on the floor, and he figured he could just rent another room, but didn't want to spare the ten caps, even though he had just gotten 200 from Ruby. He cursed himself for being a stingy bastard and shut the door, locking it in the process. The bed was pushed directly against the wall, and Ruby wasn't facing it like MacCready figured she would be. Instead, she was laying on her side, staring at the mercenary she had hired on a whim. MacCready stared at her for a bit, to see if she would roll over so they could sleep back to back like he usually did when forced to sleep in the same bed as other people. She didn't waver. He didn't bother taking off his hat as he climbed into bed, face down. He was so tired, he didn't even care that Ruby was trying to tease him, and he didn't even care that he didn't trust her at all. Ruby was so tired, she didn't care that she literally could be murdered by this man at any instant. Usually she worried about shit like that, being that she was very paranoid. They both fell asleep at around the same time, both wondering why they let themselves get into this situation.


	2. day two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn i wrote 3000 words in less than a few hours and im gonna write more what the hell is this. why does this tiny sniper booger mungo nerd do this to my heart

MacCready woke up first, the slightest amount of light peeking in from their window waking him up. He noticed his hat fell on the ground during his slumber. He then noticed the large amount of drool on his face. After wiping it off and almost cursing under his breath, he got out of the bed him and Ruby shared for the night, movements as light as possible to not wake her up. She had moved into the fetal position during her sleep, something MacCready couldn't help but find adorable. For a second, he wondered why he didn't just rob her and leave. He remembered that that's something that Gunners would do, and immediately shook the thought from his head. At the same time, though, he didn't know if he could trust her. He guessed she didn't kill him in his sleep, so that was a good sign. She also seemed pretty naive about the Commonwealth, and it would be wrong to take advantage of her like that. 

He then recalled that she had told him about the predicament with her son, and vowed not to leave her side until they found him. If Duncan was kidnapped suddenly... He didn't know what he would do. He would sure as hell be trying to find him with all the strength he had, just like Ruby was, but he wasn't sure if he would be as nice as she was being so far. Sure, she was a little bit of a dick to him, but it was only teasingly. While he was staring at Ruby and thinking about what he thought about her, trying to determine if he trusted her yet, (he sort of did, almost) she woke up and her eyes immediately locked with his. 

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She asked.

Jesus, she was as defensive and paranoid as he was.

"Do you want a cigarette?" He asked, instead dodging the question.

She furrowed her brows and sat up on the edge of the bed and put her hand out for one. When MacCready gave it to her, she stared at it intensely for a few moments before taking a gold plated lighter out from her bra (gotta keep your valuables somewhere, right?) and stuck the white end in her mouth and lit the orange end. MacCready couldn't help but explode with laughter.

"You're! You're lighting the filter. Ahahahah, oh man." MacCready laughed and it got rid of some of the tension that was in the air before. 

"Fuck off, I was in a box of ice for 200 years." 

MacCready chalked this up as her attempting to be funny, and he did end up laughing anyways, just at the idea of someone being in a box of ice for that long. 

"Here, you light the white end." He showed her how to do it by demonstrating himself, and handed her a new cigarette so she could try herself. MacCready lit his cigarette and closed his eyes, inhaling for quite a bit before exhaling. Ruby immediately saw how much it relaxed him. She decided she needed some of that relaxing action, and attempted to take as deep of a drag as he did. MacCready laughed even more as she coughed like crazy. He felt a bit bad for spending so long just laughing at her before offering her water. She nodded feverishly, as if she needed it. In all honesty, she probably did.

"You'll get the hang of it." He assured, handing her a bottle of purified water he had stolen a while back. Ruby's coughing fit stopped after about a minute. MacCready was _sure_ that she would be inept in combat for several reasons. One, she couldn't light a cigarette, two, she was wearing a fucking baseball uniform for some reason. She had to be crazy to be wearing that. And, he assumed, she really did come from Vault 111, because her suit that was peeking out of her backpack was perfectly in tact. He wasn't sure if she was on board with the whole stealing thing, but he guessed he'd find out soon enough.

"Can we head out?" Ruby asked.

"Sure thing, Boss." He smiled, still laughing at the whole cigarette ordeal. 

\-----

Doctor Amari told them to find Virgil in the Glowing Sea, so that's just what they set out to do. But it was a hell of a hike to get there, along with the fact that they'd have to find/steal power armor and radaway on the way there. Even worse, they had to deal with raiders and super mutants on the way there, too. But that's what MacCready was there for. To help Ruby out. It's not like he could back out, he promised himself that he wouldn't. He never said it out loud to her, figuring it was too soon to say something like that, and he knew that if he spoke out loud about his son he might tear up. God, he missed him. Maybe sometime down the road, he'd bring up that he wanted to try and find the cure for him. If they passed by a Med-Tek facility, maybe. Maybe. He still only sort of but not really trusted her, and the feeling was mutual. 

He warmed up to her a bit when he saw her stealing everything that wasn't bolted down and wanting to break in to places just to find supplies. As much as he bitched and moaned about having to carry some of the worthless shit she picked up, he admired that she was stealing everything just so she could have a better chance to save her son. After a few miles of wandering west with nothing too exciting happening, Ruby spoke up.

"Okay, just because I can't light a cigarette doesn't mean that I can't fight."

"I'll believe it when I see it, Boss." He teased, only teasing instead of keeping quiet because of how much she was teasing him last night.

"I'm serious." She said, furrowing her eyebrows.

"Uh huh, that why you hired me? Because you're so capable?" MacCready asked, firing a shit eating grin at her.

"I hired you to look at. No other reason." Ruby really was a champion at making MacCready flustered. She pretended to check him out as they were walking. He scrunched up his face in response. She considered that battle a success.

The actual battle they fought next was also a success. With MacCready shooting from a distance and Ruby throwing molotovs out the ass and occasionally taking out her pistol, they were undoubtedly a great duo.

Right when Ruby was about to ask if MacCready was impressed, he asked the same question. 

"The real question is, are you impressed with me?" She asked, for some reason wanting this scrawny weird man's approval.

"More impressed than when you lit the filter this morning."

"Fuck off, MacCready." 

He was a bit more sure that he trusted her after the battle, and a lot more sure that he liked having her in his corner, too. She smiled after telling him to fuck off, and came to the conclusion that she liked having him by her side for sure, too. By the time they got to Diamond City, it was 11 P.M. The partners were exhausted. Too many fucking raiders, too many fucking mutants. They had set out at sunrise, and only now did they stop to rest. It was definitely an exhilarating day, but a taxing one, too. Diamond City security out loud told the pair that they'd be watching them closely. Ruby just glared, too tired to care. MacCready did the same. She led them to the Dugout Inn. She looked at the bar, then back at MacCready, wordlessly asking if he wanted to grab a drink before heading to bed by quirking her eyebrow at him. They were oddly in sync, always able to ask each other questions without saying anything, or tell the other what to do. It was something that proved especially useful in combat. The paranoid, insecure, sarcastic, tired assholes walked over to Yefim. Ruby forked over ten caps and was handed a key.

"Ready to sleep with me again tonight?" Ruby asked, smirking.

"I'll pay you fifty caps to never phrase our sleeping arrangement like that again." MacCready said as he threw his shit down on the floor, watching Ruby do the same. He locked the door and set his hat on the dresser, similar to what Ruby did the night before. Ruby smiled and set her hat next to his, kicking off her shoes and climbing into bed. MacCready did the same. Tonight, they both slept on their backs. Both dreamt of their son.

\-----

Seventeen hours later, and MacCready woke up, only because Ruby accidentally kicked him in her sleep. He reached over her to see what time it was on her Pip Boy. With this, Ruby jolted awake and slapped him in the face reflexively. 

"Jesus Christ!" MacCready shouted, alarmed at the sudden slap. He wasn't sure if that classified as a swear or not, but he didn't care. 

"The fuck are you doin'?" Ruby asked, wondering why in the hell this little man was trying to hold her arm. 

"I wanted to see what freakin' time it was, dang." MacCready said, rubbing where he had gotten conked in the face.

"Who cares?" Ruby asked, still not having had enough sleep. 

"Me. What time is it?" He persisted.

"Six in the goddamn afternoon, and not a minute later." She said, checking her Pip Boy, groaning at the light it emitted. MacCready impersonated the groan she made, like a child would. Ruby would hit the man in the head with a pillow if she had one. 

"We gonna get up, Boss?" He asked.

Her light snoring that followed a few seconds later answered his question. 

He went to get a drink.


	3. patching up the boss

Everyone in Goodneighbor knew that MacCready could drink, but not everyone in Diamond City did. Needless to say, he really went to town drinking that night, Vadim giving his old friend a few free drinks since MacCready had told him that Lucy didn't make it. MacCready needed the drinks. His new boss was fucking crazy and drove him fucking crazy in every way possible. Ruby would say the same about her new hired gun, but she was still sleeping as if she didn't recently spend 200 years doing it. A few frequent patrons of the Dugout Inn had claimed they had never seen someone swallow the Bobrov brothers' moonshine with so much ease. A young, squirrely guy in a varsity jacket came up to MacCready and told him he was, 'a champ'. MacCready slung his arm around the boy and said, "You can be the champ, too," with such certainty that he almost believed it. 

After doing a few more shots, MacCready staggered back to his and Ruby's room, where he walked in on Ruby just waking up.

"Good morning!" MacCready shouted, a bit too loud. 

"Oh my God, you're gonna kill me." Ruby groaned, still tired, even though she had slept for over a full day now, it now being 12 A.M.

"Noooo? It's my job to make you live, silly." MacCready said, cackling. Their sleep schedules were both fucked because of how hard they had fought and how much they had walked yesterday. 

"I can't handle this sober. Let's go drink." Ruby said, looking up at MacCready. As she stood up, looking him in his eyes, she noticed he was only about two inches taller than her, and she was relatively short as well. His eyes were very dilated and couldn't stay still. Ruby put on her hat and looked at herself in the mirror for a second just to see how she looked before heading out. Her eyes were bloodshot, she had two black eyes, and her lip was split open. There was dirt all over her uniform and her hair was sticking out of the cap like crazy. 

"You look like shi- butt!" MacCready laughed, standing behind her in the mirror. Ruby jumped at how suddenly he appeared. 

"So do you!" Ruby exclaimed, a fake smile plastered on her face. She was determined to get hammered.

And hammered did she get.

By three in the morning MacCready and Ruby were sharing stories about their childhood and laughing as if they were old friends. 

"I, Robert Joseph MacCready, was the mayor of Kid Town."

"You're shittin' me! When I was a kid I was the teachers pet. Then I became a fuckin' lawyer."

"What _is_ that? Lawyer." MacCready asked, putting his face in his hands and staring intently at Ruby.

"It was my job to convince people if someone was guilty or not. Then if they were they'd go to jail." 

"Amazing! All I did was eat fungus from a cave." MacCready still thought that a lawyer was just something from Boston back in the old days. 

"Then I got froze. I woke up, I saw Nate get shot, and my baby got taken. I got out of the vault. Now I'm here with you." Ruby said, with no emotion. MacCready couldn't tell what she was feeling. 

"You got froze?" He asked, calling Vadim over to give them another round of shots.

"Yeah. Thas what they did in the vault I came from. I got froze 200 years ago. Institute took my fucking kid. They took him." She slurred.

Ruby suddenly started to cry. Tears came down her face, streaming rather fast. She didn't make a noise. Vadim was feeling pretty generous tonight, and just left the shots there without asking for any caps. MacCready made a mental note to thank Vadim for that later. 

"My wife died. My kid's sick. Some disease. That's why I'm here and not back home in D.C." MacCready thought that maybe Ruby needed someone who understood what was going on instead of thinking that she was talking to someone that didn't get it. He was right. Ruby looked over to him and wordlessly said she was sorry.

"'S okay. We're gonna find your boy." MacCready assured her, voice getting softer.

"We're gonna fix your kid back up to optimal condition." Ruby said, voice cracking a bit. The way she phrased it ended up making her laugh through her tears, and made MacCready let out a snort, too. 

"I like havin' you in my corner, lady... Boss." 

"I'm Ruby, you can stop calling me boss." 

"But Boss sounds so powerful!" He fiddled with his shot glass, which was empty. He looked over at Vadim and made a grunt and waved him over. He refilled both his and Ruby's glasses. MacCready, for whatever reason, decided to pay for both of their drinks. He later would chalk it up to being drunk, but in reality he cared about her. Not that he'd say it yet, though. The most he would do is promise to help her. After Vadim refilled their glasses, Ruby looked into MacCready's eyes and her tone shifted to a more serious one.

"To our boys." She raised her glass.

"To our boys." MacCready echoed, voice cracking a little bit as he clinked their glasses together and downed that final shot of Bobrov moonshine. 

\---  
At around 9, the pair woke up at the same time, both sick. They rushed to the bathtub at the end of the hall and threw up together. They decided to not talk about the fact that they fell asleep with Ruby spooning MacCready and instead made jokes about how this really cemented their friendship.

"Look, our puke's coming together. Becoming one." MacCready said, laughing.

"Fuck, you're gross." Ruby said, laughing as well. After they cleaned themselves up and packed up their crap, they decided it really was time to get moving. Ruby didn't want to waste any more time fucking around, fun as it may be. The pair began heading southwest. When they stopped after a few miles to get a few sips of water and just to fucking sit down for once, Ruby asked him a question.

"How do you feel things between us are going?"

"I told you last night, I like having you in my corner, Boss." MacCready said, as if he didn't know why she was asking. 

"I don't remember anything from last night." Ruby said.

"Aren't you a lightweight?" MacCready teased. Ruby's face fell, hoping she didn't get... Too personal.

"What did I tell you last night?" Ruby asked, furrowing her brows, voice more defensive than he had heard before.

"You got frozen. Your husband died." Ruby looked furious with herself, and a bit upset that MacCready knew more about her than she knew about him. "And I told you that my wife died. And that my kid was sick. You said you'd help find the cure with me. I said that I'd help you find your son." Her face eased, brows still furrowed. She licked her lips, them being chapped as ever. It got rather nippy in the Commonwealth in October. 

"Can I have a cigarette?" Ruby asked, dodging the topic they were talking about in a similar manner that MacCready usually did when he got uncomfortable- by asking about cigarettes. MacCready wordlessly handed her one. Ruby's lips split open as she lit the cigarette, blood running down her face. She didn't seem to care. MacCready didn't point it out. He felt bad that she didn't get to talk about her past on her own terms, alcohol bringing it out of her. In their silence, the pair heard some footsteps. They immediately took cover behind the nearest pile of cinderblocks, which thankfully wasn't far. Ruby scanned around to look for any places she could lead the two. There really weren't any. The choices they had were to stay there and hope the presumable raiders didn't find them or to take them out with a sneak attack. There were at least 6 sets of footsteps and lots of laughing and talking about wanting to kill someone soon because they were so bored. Ruby put out her cigarette on one of the cinderblocks they were hiding behind and whispered to MacCready.

"I want you to shoot as many of their heads off as quick as you can. I'm going to throw a grenade and then take out my laser rifle." MacCready nodded, moving to another pile of cinderblocks a few yards behind Ruby so he could not only pick off Raider's heads, but be able to see Ruby clearly as well. The reason why he moved and not her was... Well, she was a bit lead footed. It was a good thing she constantly had explosives, because those were the only way that she could kill a bunch of people quickly. Her way of approaching things was different than his, but again, they worked well together. MacCready took the first shot, watching as the raider's head popped off. He smiled a bit. As soon as Ruby heard the first, "What the fuck was that?!" She tossed a frag grenade their way, then took out her rifle. When the smoke cleared up, MacCready saw that there were only two raiders left. He picked the one that Ruby wasn't already shooting at to kill in one clean hit. As soon as all of them were down, he walked over to Ruby, who was already looting their corpses.

"Find anything useful?" He asked, a little sarcastically, since he knew she picked up everything. Everything.

"Shitty armor, a few rounds that you can have, and, like, 2 energy cells." She was pissed there weren't more, but she'd live. He for once didn't mock her, since everything she did find was pretty useful. She was thankful she didn't have to hear his whining. It really was annoying after a while. MacCready got on her nerves like no other sometimes. It was okay, though. Ruby got on his nerves too. Her insistence on looking in every single fucking building to scrounge up things was just one of Ruby's qualities that he couldn't stand. Unless if they were breaking in somewhere to get stuff. Then that was okay. They both picked up on each other's insecurity, and thankfully never said anything about it. Ruby enjoyed having someone around who would validate her and tell her that she was doing the right thing when she needed to hear it. She hadn't had anyone that did that since she had Nate. She figured he didn't have anyone who did the same since his wife passed. She sighed heavily, hungover and tired from fighting, even though it wasn't all that taxing, considering MacCready and her figuratively mopped the metaphorical floor with them. One raider managed to have a bullet graze through her left shoulder.

"You okay?" MacCready asked. 

"The bullet went through me. It's not stuck. So that's good." Ruby said, frowning at her left shoulder. It unfortunately took a lot out of her, so she took one of the many, many, many stimpaks she had lifted off of other people and injected it into herself. After that, she let out a deep sigh of relief.

"I'm much better now." She said, matter of factly.

"You wanna keep going, Boss?" MacCready asked.

"It's only noon." She said, as if it was obvious that they should keep on going.

"Alright." MacCready responded with a shrug, reloading his rifle and adjusting his cap.

Two more encounters with super mutants using the same tactics as in the battle with the raiders, and Ruby had gotten shot in the left shoulder five times. It was pissing her off, especially because MacCready had only been cut by a switchblade across his leg. MacCready almost made fun of her, but held back, seeing that she was actually really hurting. If he didn't care about the Boss, he would've made fun of her. But he didn't. That said a lot about his feelings for her. At least to him at did. Instead he slumped down next to her behind a pile of rubble when she decided it was time for a break and silently offered her another cigarette. It was times like this where Ruby really began to see the value in having someone around that was on the same wavelength as her, even if they did find each other annoying sometimes. The pair spent a good amount of time in a place they had cleared of super mutants just sitting. MacCready watched as she patched herself up, like she had done this a million times before. It was amazing that she could stitch herself up without any help, he thought. She had amassed a great deal of scars on both of her shoulders. He almost wanted to count each one, but while staring at her shoulder, it looked like he was staring somewhere else.

"Stop looking at my tits, MacCready."

"I'm not. Just counting how many bullet holes you have, and how many I don't have."

"Thanks for reminding me that you didn't get shot once today. Really needed that." 

"I'm always here for you, Boss." MacCready said, in almost a sing-songy voice. Ruby figured he was just joking. He wasn't anymore. After about a minute of watching Ruby try to apply ointment to one of her many lacerations on her back and laughing at how bad her attempts were, he decided to ask if she needed help.

"You want me to get that for you, Boss?" He asked. Ruby nodded, figuring she looked pathetic clawing at her back with ointment on her hands, cursing herself that the wound was in the one place she couldn't reach on her own. She pulled up the undershirt she was wearing so he could get to it. MacCready reached over to grab the ointment, and spread a generous amount onto his index finger before gently applying it to her injury. MacCready began feeling some romantic tension arising, so of course he decided to kill it with fire before anything could get weird between him and his employer.

"Your scar looks like a dick." He said, pulling her shirt down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maccready you fucking turd


	4. teamwork at its finest

"Your scar looks like a dick." MacCready said, immediately squashing any potential for a "moment" that they could have had. Ruby wasn't really sure how to react. She turned around and just stared, as if to say, 'What the fuck?' which is what she would have said if she wasn't so dumbfounded by this little man who kind of resembled a hamster. 

"Thanks. For putting on the ointment and telling me what my scar looks like."

"Figured you needed to know." He said, not breaking the eye contact they were sharing. Ruby furrowed her brows even more. MacCready did the same. 

It was weird.

"You're the weirdest person I've met in the Commonwealth, MacCready."

"Could say the same about you." 

Ruby felt the need to reassure him that she did in fact like having him around, even though she thought that was obvious. She patted MacCready on the shoulder twice, face relaxing. With the other hand, she pulled her shirt back down the whole way. She'd rebutton her baseball uniform after she was done giving him some _intense lovin'._ MacCready tilted his head, asking what the fuck that meant with his face. Ruby muttered an, "I don't know," and got up, rebuttoning her uniform. Way to go, MacCready. He totally made things even weirder than they were before. 

\-----

2 days later and the air was still awkward between them. They had managed to get quite a distance, though. They settled down in an abandoned house near the Mass Pike West Tunnel. Again, only one mattress. They were tired, though. They hadn't slept since... God, the Dugout Inn, he thought. They weren't going to look for another place to sleep just because of this moderate inconvenience. So hooray! MacCready was all sorts of excited to get to sleep in the same bed as the person who he made everything weird with. That he had to spend _all_ his time with. Great. They unpacked their gear, as clumsily as before, neither of them caring to take off their shoes or their hats.

"Can we talk?" MacCready asked. 

"You about to project some deep meaning onto that shoulder patting I gave you?" Ruby asked, defensive for no god damn reason. Just like always.

"Yeah. I think you care about me. And, uh. I think I care about you, too."

"Spot on analysis of the shoulder patting. Ten points to you." Ruby still had her guard up. 

"Great. I won the game. Now can you tell me what you're thinking?" MacCready asked. Ruby was picking the dirt out from under her fingernails. They had gotten long as hell. She didn't want to bite them, so instead she whipped out a knife and started sawing them off, like any rational person would do. After a couple of seconds of hacking at her thumbnail, she piped up.

"I was gonna be like, 'You really wanna know?' But then I realized, you asked, so yeah, you do really wanna know. I feel like shit. I'm mad at myself for getting weird feelings for you. I'm mad at myself because it feels like I'm moving on from Nate, even though he's been dead for 200 fucking years. I don't even know what the fuck I feel for you! You're just some asshole I hired to keep me alive on the way to find my son, the only fucking thing that's important to me right now." MacCready was about to interject with something about how he felt the same way, but as soon as he opened his mouth, she continued, purposefully cutting him off.

"I don't get why I feel something between us. And I guess, I wanna know, is if you feel that shit with me too?" Ruby asked, 'that shit,' being what normal people call a 'connection.' A 'spark.' An 'attraction', perhaps. 

Ruby was angry because she felt something different toward him than she felt toward Nate. With Nate there was no real excitement. Just a nice, caring partnership that was... Boring, in comparison to what she had with MacCready. Partially because of the literal nuclear apocalypse, partially because of his electric personality that only fueled hers. Nate calmed her, but MacCready excited her. Not sexually, but in general. It seemed like they intensified each other's personalities and it made every single moment with each other more intense than the last. 

"Should I pat your shoulder three times to show that I _really_ care about you?" MacCready asked, knowing that Ruby needed to laugh. She let out a huff of laughter.

"No, ding dong, I know you care about me. I mean like, you gotta feel that right? Like. It's just like... You know?" She asked, grasping at figurative straws for words.

MacCready took the 'fingernail knife' out of Ruby's hands and set it down on the end table near them before walking back over to her. He looked at her; really took in what she looked like. She looked beat up as hell. She looked so fucking tired, black eyes fading a bit to an odd greenish yellowish mix. Her eyes still shone through all the abuse her face had taken, though. He realized they were about the same color as his. Her hair was the same shade as the dirt that was on her face. Ruby's eyes kept darting from looking at his eyes to his lips, waiting for what he was going to say next, insecurity and paranoia getting the best of her, because she was expecting the worst. The worst being that MacCready thought that she was stupid for bringing this up and would leave.

"Yeah." He smiled at the way that she phrased it. "I know."

The way their first kiss happened wasn't in the same way that it happened in every romantic holotape Ruby shamefully listened to every once in a while. Neither of them had had practice in years. As they leaned in, their foreheads clunked together. Their second attempt went a little better, albeit not by much. It was less lip on lip action and more teeth on teeth action. It definitely wasn't how either of them were picturing how it was going to happen. Not that they had thought of it, of course. With her Pip Boy's radio accidentally being activated, they heard incredibly loudly, "Hey, who are you writing a poem for? SKEETER!" It startled the both of them to the point of jumping back from the kiss, letting out anxious laughter. Ruby was determined to make this happen. To actually happen, properly, more like the romance holotapes. She didn't turn off Diamond City Radio just yet, actually loving the song that was playing. She figured MacCready would complain if he hated it. Instead, she took off her stupid fucking hat and took off his stupid fucking hat and placed their stupid fucking hats on the end table with her fingernail knife. As he turned around to watch and see what she was doing, she walked up to him, stood on her tip-toes a bit, and kissed the hell out of him. 

She practically melted into him as he pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her waist almost instantaneously, as if he couldn't get enough of being close to her. And it was true. The two couldn't get enough of each other, as weird and kind of annoying as they found each other. She grabbed his hair and ran her fingers through it for a second, always wanting to know what it felt like. He certainly did look better without his hat on, in her opinion. It felt greasy and dirty, just like her hair did. She pulled on his hair instead of just running her fingers through it, wondering if he liked things on the rougher side or not.

Of course he did.

Feeling that made him immediately follow up by taking Ruby's bottom lip into his mouth and dragging his teeth across it with just enough pressure to feel good, but not enough to hurt her. It was obvious that he had done this before. Ruby tried not to think about it; about how they might regret this later. She let out a muffled, quiet moan in response, barely audible. This was already the most charged moment she'd ever had with anyone else, and he hadn't even gotten her clothes off yet. The same went for MacCready. He got mad at himself for having this much chemistry with her, hoping to death that Lucy wouldn't care, even though she was long gone. But he tried not to think about it. He moved his hands from her waist to her baseball uniform, unbuttoning it while still having his tongue shoved in her mouth. It took him a bit longer to unbutton it than if he would have just broke the kiss and looked down for a second, but he couldn't fucking do that. 

"WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" They heard Travis yell from her Pip Boy. MacCready jolted back, yet again.

"I am **not** doing this listening to him." 

If Ruby wasn't hellbent on finally fucking this annoying piece of shit, she would say, 'What, you don't listen to Travis yelling about your death while you jack off?'. But she was indeed hellbent on fucking him. She turned the radio off and removed her Pip Boy, letting it drop onto the wood floor. It was strong enough to take a little drop, she thought. She didn't want there to be another moment where she wasn't kissing him, tasting him. His mouth tasted like cigarettes and sugar bombs, which didn't really matter to her at all. She tasted the exact same, but fuck, it felt so good to be doing this. Both of them had gone a long, long time without any human contact. Technically Ruby had MacCready beat by a few hundred years, but who's counting? 

She took a break from kissing and grinding into him the best she could while standing up and took off the rest of her uniform as quickly as she could, leaving her just in her underwear. Nothing too special, just white cotton panties and a bra. MacCready was a little busy checking her out, and thus didn't get started on undressing himself until he looked up at her face and she asked why he wasn't taking off his clothes yet. He couldn't help but look at her for a while. He hadn't seen her in anything other than that baseball uniform, which he really did have to ask, why that of all things, but he needed to stop thinking about things that didn't matter and start thinking about how fucking hot the woman in front of him was. She somehow had a little bit of a tummy going still, probably because she hadn't been starved for that long, unlike himself. He admired her full figure for a second longer before taking off his duster, letting it fall to the floor. She took off her shoes without moving her gaze. He unzipped and unbuttoned his pants, shaking them off and kicking off his shoes as well. MacCready gently guided her down to the mattress, straddling her before leaning down to kiss her again, his dick grinding against her. This time, he was the one to let out a noise, half moan, half groan. He was happy he was kissing her because it really helped to muffle the sound of his moans. Ruby kept clawing at his back, eliciting more noises from him. He didn't like that she was getting so many reactions out of him, but almost none out of her, and figured that he'd try being more rough, since she seemed like she enjoyed that. 

"Just say something if it's too much." MacCready said to her, his voice turning softer, more caring. 

"You too." Ruby said, wondering just exactly what he meant by that, hoping to God that he was going to actually be a bit rough with her. She had been craving rough-ish sex for literally over 200 years, never having had it with Nate.

He grabbed her wrists and pinned them down onto the mattress. He stopped kissing her, but didn't stop grinding against her, his dick somehow even harder than before. He whispered in her ear, asking her if she liked being held down or not. There was something about his tone that made her more turned on than before, and she was a bit irritated with the fact that he could do this to her so easily. She let out a moan that definitely meant yes, but he wanted to hear her say it.

"Say it." He demanded, voice lowering, increasing the pressure on her wrists.

"Fuck you, I love this so much." Ruby admitted. 

She let him think that he had her completely for a total of two seconds before leaning up to bite his neck remarkably forcefully. MacCready was so startled by this his pressure on her wrists loosened and he let out a pathetic whine. In one swift motion, Ruby pushed him off of her so he was sitting up, his back against the wall, then climbed on top of him and kissed him harder than they had kissed before, practically shoving her tongue down his throat. MacCready was back to wrapping his arms around her as tightly as he could. Only after about thirty more seconds of them making out did they decide that wasn't enough anymore. Ruby lifted herself off of him slightly so she could pull his underwear down far enough to get to his dick. She didn't even bother taking off her panties, just moving them to the side so MacCready could fuck her. She knew that MacCready didn't want to stop holding her like this, and she didn't want to stop being held, so she grabbed his dick and stuck it in herself. Since she was practically dripping wet, there wasn't any need to use spit as lube. 

"Fuck." MacCready threw his head back, letting out a moan that Ruby decided was the hottest thing she had ever heard. She had always liked MacCready's voice, but she absolutely loved it like this. She noticed it was the first time she had heard him swear. She felt a little special that it was her that made him swear. 

MacCready grabbed her hips and pulled her down so he could get more of his length inside her. He ended up thrusting all of himself into her in one motion, accidentally on purpose, just to hear her moan. She let out a string of curses, not expecting him to shove his whole dick inside her at once. What he lacked in muscle and height in general, he definitely compensated for it with his dick. She figured it was at least an inch thicker than Nate's. She beat herself up for a second for thinking about him again, but MacCready proved to be a useful distraction, guiding her up and down on his dick, gradually increasing their speed and how hard they fucked. Never once did they fall out of rhythm. They really were incredibly in tune with each other when they weren't being weird and paranoid. 

They both leaned in to kiss each other at the same time, still loving to sloppily kiss as they fucked. The noises MacCready were making were getting even louder than before as he got closer to climax. This led Ruby to hiss at him, "Shut the fuck up." They still had to be quiet, after all. MacCready obeyed, instead just breathing harder. God, he loved being told what to do. Ruby put her hands back in MacCready's hair and pulled on it more. What set him over the edge was the combination of getting his hair pulled and how hard Ruby was fucking him. 

"I'm gonna fucking cum, fuck." He warned.

"Me- Me too. Shit. Cum inside me, I can't get pregnant anymore." She whispered as fast as she could, hoping that as soon as he heard it he would let himself finish in her. He was so relieved he didn't have to pull out and kissed Ruby with so much force and so much passion that Ruby swore to herself that she had to have him again and again. They both fucked each other as hard as they could, kissing each other and clinging onto each other as if each other were the only things they had left. As soon as Ruby felt a spurt of cum shoot inside her, she came, that being the final thing to set her off. 

After a good thirty seconds of riding out the last of their orgasms, their feverish, desperate kisses turned into softer, more relaxed ones. Ruby got up off of him and adjusted her underwear as he pulled up his, laying down on her side, waiting for MacCready to lay down as well. He laid down on his back. Ruby flopped on top of him, using his chest as a pillow. He held her as if she was a teddy bear, which she kind of was. But like, a human teddy bear, he thought. He didn't realize that Ruby couldn't be both human and bear, though. He was too busy thinking about how much he needed that. Right as he thought about how he needed that, Ruby spoke, saying the exact same thing.

"I needed that." She mumbled, getting closer to him.

"Me too." He said, closing his eyes. He didn't care that it was 40 degrees out right now, if he needed a damn blanket he'd wake up freezing his ass off in the middle of the night and get one. But for now, he snuggled up with his boss. That's all he cared about right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that was my first time writing smut so im sorry if it sucked. hooray they finally boned
> 
> also get it, teamwork at its finest, cause they're a hell of a team, and sex, if you think about it is just a hell of a collaboration of bodies or something. i'm gonna go to bed. it's 4 am.


End file.
